The UK has rejected the relocation demand of a high-profile Afghan judge despite the fact that the Taliban are hunting him for jailing their fighters detained by the US troops after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
London’s High Court was told that the counter-terrorism judge JZ is in hiding in Kabul after the Taliban searched his house last month and an attempt to kidnap his 16-year-old son, followed by militants’ threats of reprisals.
He applied to relocate to the UK along with a group of judges under a scheme the British government set up in April 2021 to help locally employed staff at risk of Taliban revenge but was rejected for the scheme in October as not eligible because his work had been for the US and not the UK.
From 2008 to 2011, JZ worked at Afghanistan’s main military prison at Bagram Air Base where he tried Taliban insurgents and there’s evidence that he had received threats and had been provided with security by US forces well before 2021.
The UK-based brother of JZ informed the British officials about his brother’s plight to get him out of the country in August last year, as the Taliban advanced on Kabul.
Forced into hiding within Afghanistan, JZ , his wife, six children, and another brother, missed the evacuation opportunity during the British military’s Operation Pitting to fly Britons and some Afghans out of the country as the scheme was abruptly halted on Taliban’s orders.
More than 15,000 people were brought out of Afghanistan under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy via Operation Pitting during August 2021.
JZ’s lawyers have been fighting the decision in the courts and the UK government will decide this week if it will back his new application on compelling compassionate grounds because of his circumstances.
He will have to travel via Pakistan and had been told to travel there to apply but JZ feared that if his application was rejected, he’d be returned to the Taliban so the UK government would now have to indicate whether his application would be successful before he travels to minimize the risk to his family.
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